


All the Days of Our Lives, Phase 3

by ElrondsScribe



Series: All the Days of Our Lives: The Avengers [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Avengers react, F/M, May Parker/James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), avengers watch the movies, watching the movies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 13:54:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9901250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElrondsScribe/pseuds/ElrondsScribe
Summary: All new! Phase 3 of the series is now a group reaction to The Incredible Hulk (2008) rather than Iron Man 2. Once I'm done with IH I will get to that one, eventually.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Let me make something clear to you readers right now. I am not on payroll, and you are not my paying clients. I am a pianist, and I have four to five hours daily of practicing to do in addition to getting ready for my undergraduate degree in music performance this fall. I also have various little odd jobs to fulfill.
> 
> Translation: I work on this story when I have both the time and the inclination to do so. I am going to post slowly and irregularly. Deal with it.

**I decided to go ahead with this one and not** **_Iron Man 2_ ** **because I haven't actually seen a reaction fic for** **_Incredible Hulk_ ** **done before, and also because I wanted to go ahead and show the Avengers just what Ross did and then tried to do to Bruce Banner (after which he had the** **_nerve_ ** **\- the** **_balls!_ ** **\- to put** **_Wanda Maximoff_ ** **in a straitjacket!).**

**Also, I thought that writing about Bruce's tribulations at this point would be the best way to give everybody a break from the Steve-Bucky-vs-Tony angst.**

**Now I'm not entirely sure whether anybody in SHIELD knew that Ross originally intended to weaponize the Hulk, or that the Abomination was (in a way) originally Ross’s idea. In this story, the former SHIELD people and the original Avengers know only that 1) the Hulk came from an attempt at recreating the super soldier serum; that 2) Ross hounded Bruce to the ends of the earth, by all appearances to kill the Hulk. Fury and Natasha (and probably Hill) know that Ross provoked Bruce's transformation at Culver, and that he had a big hand in the creation of the Abomination.**

**For the purposes of this story, the original Avengers do** **_not_ ** **know that Ross tricked Bruce by telling him he was working toward something else; that Ross was hunting Bruce to** **_weaponize_ ** **the Hulk; or that Bruce fled because he learned that Ross meant to weaponize the Hulk. With the exception of Fury and Natasha (and Hill), they also don't know Ross’s role in creating the Abomination.**

**This is gonna be _fun_ once they find out all that.**

* * *

"More Iron Man?” asked Rhodey curiously as he walked into the palace lounge. Walking was still a challenge for him, and so the boy Peter Parker (the fast-quipping Spider-Man) had been asked to stand by in case of emergency, which he did surprisingly cheerfully.  
 ****

Everybody else had already arrived. Bucky's new arm was still under construction, giving him the perfect excuse to keep his only remaining arm wrapped around Natasha again. She didn't seem to mind much. (But then, the man  _ had _ spent most of the previous night between her thighs. Wanda was trying hard to ignore the . . . mental replays.)

“Nope, slight change of plans,” said Tony, looking over the stack of DVDs. “Look.” He passed Rhodey a slip of paper.

Wanda had already read the note when she’d arrived. It had apparently been sitting inside the package that held the DVDs they weren’t currently watching, and was written in the same handwriting that the original letter had been written in. This one was much shorter.

_ We’re sorry! _ it ran.  _ There’s been a new development. You’ll be watching The Incredible Hulk next, and Iron Man 2 will come after that. _

“The Incredible Hulk?” asked Rhodey, looking up.

“The Incredible Hulk!” said Thor, smiling at Bruce who was not smiling at all. As before, Betty was sitting next to him.

“Only one thing that could be about!” said Clint.

“Awesome!” said Bruce in tones that meant just the opposite. “What’re we waiting for?”

Nonetheless Pepper took the case over to the player and put the disc in the drive, and then everybody settled back for the wild ride that was sure to follow.

The music that blasted through the speakers took nearly everybody off guard and set them on edge from there. The first thing they saw was a quick succession of brain scans and other images, mostly in green. There came a brief glimpse of Bruce’s eyes.

And then the words  _ The Incredible Hulk _ appeared with a burst of light behind them on a mostly-dark screen.

“Fasten your seatbelts, kids, it’s gonna be a bumpy ride,” said Bruce.

“Hoo boy!” said Tony.

Someone pushed a switch; there was another brain scan; and in a chair attached to a large machine sat a man. Everything was coming and going in flashes, like mosaic tiles of memory.

“Oh, we’re  _ starting _ with this,” said the real Bruce.

A woman in a white lab coat - none other than Betty Ross herself - stood watching behind a glass panel.

“Hey, Dr. Ross!” said Peter. The woman gave him a halfhearted wave.

From the chair, onscreen Bruce gave Betty a wink.

“Your hair’s shorter,” said Scott irrelevantly.

“Here goes!” said May.

The chair tilted into position for the procedure.

“I suppose it’s too late to say ‘good luck’?” said Vision.

Someone - Betty, it looked like, pushed a button.

“I appreciate the sentiment,” said the real Bruce.

Onscreen, a green light shone into Bruce’s eyes.

Betty pushed another switch and a button. A red Danger sign began to glow.

“Ooh. . .” said Pepper.

The green light grew brighter. The irises of Bruce’s eyes glowed green. Betty stared through the glass, clearly worried.

“Uh-oh,” muttered Tony, looking genuinely anxious.

There was a roar. The white shirt Bruce had been wearing ripped. A mass of green rose from it. The real Bruce cringed.

“First time,” said the real Bruce with a sigh.

The chair was knocked on its side, steaming and smoking. Behind the glass, Betty ran forward, staring in horror. A huge green hand appeared in the corner, reaching for some part of the machine that dangled from the ceiling.

The real Bruce cringed again.

“Oh, God!” gasped Sam, starting back.

“It’s okay,” said the real Betty to Bruce, vehemently.

Through the eyes of the newly released Hulk, they saw dimly the form of the man they all knew as Secretary Ross, or General Ross, as he had then been. There was blood on his face, and he seemed to be utterly horrified.

The very sight of the man was nearly enough to return Wanda to the Raft, and she gulped hard. Vision's arm tightened around her, and angry thoughts began to rise in his head.

“ _ Ross _ ,” growled Steve darkly.

Tony indulged in fond memories of having put Ross on hold when he'd called - about the breakout at the Raft? How was Tony not yet in prison himself?! So much for having signed the Accords!

And then they saw Betty lying on the floor among the wreckage of the machines, unconscious, bruised and battered. The shadow of the Hulk loomed over her, and a great green hand reached down toward her.

Bruce went pale, and Wanda felt his heart racing; but the real Betty clutched his hand.

“He -” Laura pointed at the screen, but there was no time to say the rest -  _ he wants to _ protect _ her! _

But then there were flashes of a gun, of a military man standing by Ross and shooting. The Hulk seemed to roar, and he reached for Ross and shoved him aside before tossing the man with the gun out through the door of the lab.

“Oh dear,” murmured May. The real Bruce rubbed his forehead.

Ross, bleeding and obviously badly wounded, crawled across the floor and flung himself on top of Betty. His hand was outstretched and his mouth open in a silent scream of  _ No! _

The room seemed to spin, and then another image of a scan appeared.

Then the door of a hospital room slid open, and there lay Betty, still unconscious and looking terribly battered.

“Oh,  _ God _ ,” groaned Bruce. The real Betty didn't bother saying  _ I was fine _ because she obviously was not.

A hand - it must have been onscreen Bruce's - tenderly caressed the woman's face. Then came a glimpse like another memory of Betty with a radiant smile and bare shoulders lying under a sheet. (Clint, Laura, and May looked uneasy again, but it lasted only an instant.)

Then they saw Bruce sitting by Betty's bedside again, and now a hand clamped down on his arm. A thunderous-looking Ross loomed over him, and shoved him roughly from the room.

“Like the whole thing wasn't your fault anyway!” the real Betty blurted out at her onscreen father.

Onscreen Betty's eyes opened, but Bruce was already gone and her father was staring stonily through the glass at her.

“What do you mean?” asked T’Challa sharply of the cellular biologist.

She was scowling. “Later, your Highness.”

Wanda only vaguely noticed Vision's rising suspicion because she had glimpsed Betty’s memories and her own blood was beginning to boil. Ross had tried to do  _ what? _

At the door of the facility Bruce turned briefly to see Ross speaking to a private; then he turned back around and pushed out of the building.

Newspaper headlines about first sightings of the Hulk flashed by; then an image of a house in ruins; then a crushed car. Military men stormed into another house, armed to the teeth, but seeming to find only traces of their quarry - books, papers, test tubes.

“I'm scared to ask what he wants you for,” said Scott.

Bruce eyed him. “That’s good. Don't ask.”

Natasha exchanged a grim look with Maria.

Onscreen, Ross stood in front of a table, peering intently at some report.

A set of blinds in an upper story window twitched as someone looked out of them down at two armed soldiers outside. Two helicopters whizzed through the air; shadowy forms of more soldiers moved through a back street. Once again they were met with defeat; an empty cot and a pile of dishes greeted them.

Ross spun in a chair, cigar smoke surrounding his head. Another newspaper headlines flashed past, followed by images from helicopter windows and another image of Ross. He seemed to be monitoring yet another pursuit.

“Okay, this is a little extreme for a shovel talk,” said Bucky.

“That what you think this is?” asked Fury wryly.

Bucky looked troubled. He had been hoping it was a shovel talk and not an attempt to weaponize the Hulk.

A page showing a  _ Requisition Request: US Army Stark Industries - Approved _ notice appeared, followed by plans for some rather awful-looking device. Ross puffed at his cigar again while looking through a number of fingerprint scans. A plane touched down at a military base.

When the image of an intercepted email from Bruce to Betty flashed across the screen, the woman in question flushed scarlet with fury.

“Never said he didn't play dirty,” said Clint grimly.

There came the briefest glimpse of the name Nick Fury, followed by a few images of Bruce. Ross seemed to have lost track of him.

A metronome ticked incessantly - remembered images went by in flashes - then a hand clamped down on the metronome, and a shirtless and sweating Bruce Banner stared at it, panting. It seemed to be in real-time at last, for the image did not cut away.

“That was just flashbacks?” asked Tony, blinking.

“Whew, that was intense!” whistled Sam.

“Meditation? That helps?” asked Betty.

For onscreen Bruce was sitting on a mat on the floor of a very bare-looking room, and had just moved the metronome from beside the mat. He pushed the ticker into place as the words  _ Days Without Incident: 158 _ appeared in white on the lower right corner of the screen.

“Just over five months,” said the Vision half aloud. The real Bruce heard, and gave an absent nod.

Then they saw a wide shot of the crowded ramshackle buildings of a shantytown, one that spanned many steep hilltops.

“The Rocinha Favela?” Clint read aloud from the corner of the screen. “That's where you were?”

The real Bruce nodded.

“Well, it's nice and crowded,” said Maria. “Two hundred and fifty thousand according to the last census, and in reality probably more than that.”

Onscreen, the shot of the multi-level apartment buildings of various colors seemed to go on and on and  _ on _ , and Steve whistled. “That's one  _ big _ slum,” he commented.

“Biggest in Brazil,” said Bruce.

Then they saw him onscreen, standing high on a hilltop with a soda bottle in his hand, seemingly looking out over the district.

The scene changed, and now Bruce was in his kitchen (which appeared to have both running water and electricity), cooking at a stove. He was actually stirring some kind of ground beef or sausage in a big skillet with a wooden spoon. He paused to feed a bit of the meat to a black dog standing nearby. “Is it ready?” he asked jokingly.

“You have a dog?” asked Cooper with interest.

The real Bruce looked rather sad. “I used to. I don't know what happened to him.”

Nobody asked any more about the dog.

Onscreen Bruce dished out the rest of the meat on a plate, and went to turn on a little old television, picking up a worn black English-Portugese dictionary resting on top of it. He flipped past a weather channel, a soccer game broadcast, a drama series, and paused on a Sesame Street segment.

“Cookie Monster!” said Sharon, pointing.

“C is for ‘cookie’, that's good enough for me!” said Sam in a growling sing-song, and nearly all the Americans chuckled as fond memories went through their minds.

Onscreen Bruce sat down in a chair in front of the television with his breakfast and his Portuguese dictionary. He opened the dictionary with one hand, glancing at the television as he ate.

He flipped to the word he was looking for, which seemed to be  _ hungry _ , and said it over a few times as he ate. “ _ Esfomeado,” _ he said.  _ “Faminto. Com fome.” _

The dog blinked its round brown-rimmed eyes at him, and Bruce scruffled it affectionately behind the ears.

“Ohhh!” cried the real Bruce suddenly, smacking his forehead. “That's what I said!”

“Huh?” said half a dozen voices.

“Tell ya later,” said Bruce.

Onscreen Bruce walked down a staircase that sloped down the hill on which his apartment sat (pretty high up, from the looks of it) alongside a wall decorated with red tiles.

“The Escadaria Selarón, I think,” said the Vision.

_ Random facts we didn't want to know _ , thought Rhodey.  _ Thanks, Viz. _

In a martial arts studio, a man who was obviously the instructor flipped Bruce over his back and then practiced the move again more slowly.  _ Let's work on your breathing, _ he said in Portuguese as he finished.

He sat on the floor facing Bruce, and put his hand on his chest just under his collarbone.  _ Here, emotion, _ he said in Portuguese, and then in English,  _ “Ah, fear - no good. So, emotion and control. Breathe! Breathe!” _

And Bruce puffed in and out, brow furrowed in concentration.

“Was that helpful?” asked Thor of the real Bruce.

Bruce shrugged. “All things considered, I guess.”

Thor raised an eyebrow, but did not ask any more.

_ Use your diaphragm! _ said the instructor on the screen in Portuguese, sucking his stomach in and out to demonstrate.

Tony whistled. “That looks grueling.”

_ The best way to control your anger, _ went on the instructor.  _ is to control your body. Control your pulse. _

Then he reached out and struck Bruce hard across the face.

“Oh!” sputtered Steve.

Wanda had started herself. Had the man known . . . no, obviously not.

Onscreen Bruce’s head was thrown aside, and his heart monitor began beeping wildly. He glanced down at it in some alarm, seeing that his heart rate had climbed dangerously high.

“It’s okay,” said the real Bruce, and everybody watching unconsciously relaxed as the scene changed.


End file.
